MARK MANSON
THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F-K COMES TO THE SCREEN
After writing a very successful book, why did you decide to make it a documentary? Honestly, it’s really as simple as there’s a lot of people out there that don’t read books, but do watch documentaries. I wanted to get the ideas out to as many people as possible. That’s pretty much it. No grand aspirations in lm or anything like that.
I just wanted to get the ideas out there.
So you think you’ll reach a di erent audience, a new audience?
I’m hoping so, but also give the current audience a new format and a new style to re-engage with the concept.
It’s intense viewing. There’s a lot going on.
It was a blast. A lot of the vision was with Nathan [Price] the director. He and I had a lot of discussions that it should be irreverent, it should be o -the-wall, it should be a little bit weird at times. I think one of the things that made the book very successful was that it disrupted what was expected of a self-help book. So the goal was to kind of do the same thing with this. Is it a documentary? Is it selfhelp? It’s kind of weird and wild with crazy stu going on all the time.
Did the pandemic change your outlook, or maybe the things you do or don’t give a f--k about?
For me personally, I change and evolve, and my life was quite di erent in 2021 than it was in 2016 [when the book came out]. So there were some value shifts that had changed by that point. In terms of how I felt about the content of the book itself, 99 per cent of it I still stood behind it. What is the key takeaway … that you hope people leave with?
I wanted to share the most painful moments of my life and show why they were transformative, but also to make people feel less alone ... let people know that they are not weird and there’s not something wrong with them. With the lm, we leaned more into those narratives and a little less into the philosophical ideas, and so that’s really what I hope people take away. (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F--K is now available to rent and own on digital)